Rants, raves (and occasionally considered opinions) on phyloinformatics, taxonomy, and biodiversity informatics. For more ranty and less considered opinions, see my Twitter feed.ISSN 2051-8188 View this blog in Magazine View.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

iEvoBio launches

iEvoBio aims to be a forum bringing together biologists working in evolution, systematics, and biodiversity, with software developers, and mathematicians, both to catalyse the development of new tools, and to increase awareness of the possibilities offered by existing technologies (ranging from standards and reusable toolkits to mega-scale data analysis to rich visualization). The meeting extends over two full days and will feature traditional elements, including a keynote presentation at the beginning of each day and contributed talks, as well as more dynamic and interactive elements, including a challenge, lightning talk-style sessions, a software bazaar, and Birds-of-a-Feather gatherings.

The conference is all about participation, so there is ample opportunity for people to get involved, whether giving contributed talks, lightning talks, software demos, or entering the challenge. Keep checking the website for details, or follow us on Twitter (@iEvoBio).

Registration for the Evolution meetings will open soon (next week we think), and from that time you'll have the option to extend your stay in Oregon by a day and take part in what we hope will be an exciting follow-on to the main meeting.

Lastly, in the interests of disclosure, I'm the chair of the Organising Committee. However, credit for the original idea (and most of the hard work in making it a reality) belongs to Hilmar Lapp at NESCent. Hilmar has had the unenviable task of herding myself and the other members of the committee (Cécile Ané, Rob Guralnick, Cynthia Parr, and Michael Sanderson) through the numerous conference calls required to make this happen.